Combs– Kampanisut

These is a traditional delicacy from the Lapland. Those Combs are a cross over between shortbread and English buttermilk scones. If you roll them very thin and make them small they are more in the cookie section, if you make the original 5 cm x 10 cm x 0.5 cm (or even thicker) it is more in the pastry domain. The ones you can find in the shop are more like pastry. Despite not being traditional, they go nicely with cream cheese and strawberry yam. Some recipes use baking powder, some soda, some both. But all use cold butter and butter milk.

Ingredients:

200 g Cold Butter

2 dl Sugar

7 dl Flour

1 tl Baking powder

2 dl Butter milk or Finnish yoghurt (kermaviiliä)

½ tl Baking soda

Instructions:

Knead the butter and the sugar together. Mix in a bowl the flour and the baking powder and add it in small batches to the butter sugar mix. Knead the floor in. Keep part of the flour (about a third, else kneading is a bit hard if there it too much flour). Mix the soda and butter milk and knead in and then add rest of the flour.

Cool for about an hour.

Preheat oven. Divide the dough in two sausages, each about half a meter long. Roll out till dough is about ½ cm thing (this is the version for the big combs). Cut out rectangles about 10 x 5 cm. Cut in each rectangle 3 cuts and fan them out a bit. If you want to make both thin and thick combs, do not mix them on the same baking tray, they have different baking times.

Bake for about 8 minutes in a hot oven i.e. 225 C. If you make the thinner version, then its less time in the oven.